As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Cloud computing is a model for enabling access to a shared pool of computing resources. Particularly, cloud computing and cloud storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party IHSs and data centers. The approach relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, for example, by reducing the overall cost of resources, such as: power, air conditioning, rack space, etc. needed to maintain a given system. Also, with cloud computing, multiple users can often access a remote server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing software licenses for different applications.
Although enterprise data owners may desire to deploy cloud services (such as, for example, MICROSOFT OFFICE 365, EVERNOTE, GOOGLE DOCS, and others) to their users, they also have a fiduciary and corporate responsibility to maintain the security of sensitive data.
However, when using conventional cloud services, data is stored in plaintext in the cloud provider, resulting in the data owner losing control of private documents, which may be subject to disclosure through theft, catastrophic system failures, court subpoena, etc. The inventors hereof have determined that these problems are the main reason why businesses continue to resist using cloud services altogether; or limit their use within the enterprise.